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Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Hi guys, welcome to a new week of the Daily Blade. One of the greatest things about this weird job that I have being a podcaster and a speaker and doing all this stuff is I get the opportunity to meet some amazing, awesome people. But one of the best people that I've ever had the privilege of meeting was John Eldridge, and so John Eldridge is a fantastic author. He's the author of the seminal work in men's ministry, and that is Wild at Heart. It's basically the only men's ministry book that has sold more than like 14 copies, and I've also had the opportunity to have John Eldridge as a personal mentor of mine. So if you're not familiar with John Eldridge or Wild at Heart, I highly suggest you go get that book and read it. But kind of the main nexus of that book is this quote from it here Deep in his heart, every man longs for a battle to fight, an adventure to live and a beauty to rescue, and so Wild at Heart as a book really changed how I view manhood and manliness, you know, certainly in a Christian context, but there's actually a lesser known book by John Eldredge that completely shifted how I view Jesus Christ, our Savior, and so that's his 2011 book Beautiful Outlaw subtitle here Experiencing the Playful, disruptive Extravag.

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Experiencing the playful, disruptive, extravagant personality of Jesus. Now I remember getting this book I just love the name, beautiful Outlaw. But then whenever I read the subtitle, I remember seeing personality and being like, okay, I'm kind of intrigued by that, because up to that point, if I'm being honest, I don't know that I had ever really considered the personality of Jesus, that Jesus was a man that actually had one of those right. Because when other people would read the gospels or when I would read the gospels myself, I would just kind of read it like Jesus was, you know, this robot or the zombie, like, and then Jesus went to this place and then he did some things and people got mad and then Jesus left and did more things, like that's just kind of how I read it. But then I read Beautiful Outlaw and each chapter of this book delves into a different part of the personality of Jesus the man. Now, as you know, with many John Eldredge books, he does take some poetic license in different places, but, guys, he doesn't do so in order to contradict or add to or to change the text in any way, but he's trying to bring it to life, he's trying to provide some light for it.

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So today we're going to start by looking at chapter five of Beautiful Outlaw, and it's called the Most Human Face of All. So I'll read from it here, for something has crept into our assumptions about Jesus that makes it almost impossible to relate to him, not to mention love him. I say crept because it has not been a conscious decision. Few of the things that shape our actual convictions are. I think much of the creep has happened, ironically, as a result of our attempts to love and revere Christ. But crept in this notion has and it has done great damage to our perceptions of him and our experience of him. It's the notion that Jesus was really quote, unquote pretending when he presented himself as a man. And so the point here is that, okay, yeah, yeah, you know God, you know was, you know Jesus was God and all that kind of stuff. But you know he was just kind of faking it, he wasn't actually hungry, he wasn't actually distressed at all these points.

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So let's go back to a beautiful outlaw here to hear and make his point. After all, we're talking about Jesus here. The guy walked on water, raised Lazarus from the dead. He never broke a sweat, right. But then what do you make of the terrible sweat in Gethsemane?

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They went to a place called Gethsemane and Jesus said to his disciples sit here while I pray. He took Peter, james and John along with him and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. He said to them Stay here and keep watch. Going a little further, he fell to the ground and prayed that, if it was possible. That's Mark 14, 32-36. In Luke 22, 44. He says and then Eldridge goes into talking about the 40 days and 40 nights of fasting in the desert and the temptations that he experienced.

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And then it kind of hit me at this point when I was reading the book Jesus was fully man, like he was actually a man. This might make some of you think I'm kind of dense, but I was like, oh my gosh, like he's actually a man. And then Eldridge hits us with these three scriptures in the same chapter John 1.14,. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Hebrews 2, 14. Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that his death might break the power of him. Who holds the power of death? Philippians 2, 7 and 8, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a bond servant and being made in the likeness of men, being found in appearance as a man. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

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Because, guys, on this earth, jesus was God and a bod, for sure, but the bod was a human bod. Right, he was fully God while simultaneously being fully man. And what do all men have? They all have a personality. And so that was the big kind of aha moment for me when I was reading through this book. It's like, oh my gosh, I've been reading about Jesus so wrong. And then, when you're reading Jesus wrong, you don't get the fullness of who he was, because, yes, he was God, but yes, he was man, which allows us to relate to him even better. So, guys, come back here tomorrow where we will explore that further and answer the question is Jesus really playful?

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Thank you for listening to today's episode Before you go. If you want to help equip other men for the fight, share this podcast around and leave us a five-star rating and review. Stay sharp.